The Speakers

Dr. Chiara Burlina is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Padova (Italy). She has worked as a research fellow in Regional Science at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (Italy) and as a postdoc at the Catholic University of Milan (Italy), after completing the PhD in Economics and Management from the University of Padova (Italy). Her research interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, Regional Economics, Economic Geography, and Institutions. Her research specifically explores how different economic factors impact the development of regions, based on a quantitative approach. She has collaborated actively with researchers in other disciplines, like creative and cultural economics, innovation, and finance. She has published on international peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Regional Science, Regional Studies, European Urban and Regional Science, Environment and Planning A, Applied Economics. She has also participated in several research projects as research officer, including HORIZON 2020 on socioeconomic and cultural transformations in the context of the fourth industrial revolution.

Bernardo Caldarola is an applied economist, working as researcher at the United Nations University - UNU MERIT in Maastricht. Previously, he worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Enrico Fermi Research Center in Rome. He received a PhD in Science and Technology Policy from the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex (Brighton, UK). His research examines transformation of economic structures, aiming to understand the impact of technology on the process of structural change with a particular interest in its inclusiveness and sustainability. His research bridges several academic fields, such as development economics, economic geography and economic complexity. He has also collaborated with several international organizations and research centres, including the former UK Department for International Development, the Institute of Development Studies and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Prof. Carolina Castaldi holds the Chair in Geography of Innovation at Utrecht University. Her research deals with processes of innovation and how they unfold over time and over space. Her goal is to develop a broad account of innovation, as including both technological and non-technological forms. As such, she has investigated extensively how innovation emerges in service and creative sectors and the changing business models through which companies operate in local and global markets. She is using theories and concepts from evolutionary economics, in combination with insights from other disciplines. Her most recent research aims at understanding how firm-level innovation drives regional development and the resilience of places. Her original contribution to research on geography of innovation also includes the development of novel indicators of innovation, exploiting patent and trademark data.

François is Deputy Director of the Complexity Economics group, Lead Researcher at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, an Oxford Martin fellow, an Associate member of Nuffield college, and an External Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna.

François’s main areas of research are in the economics of innovation and productivity, environmental economics, complex systems, and forecasting. Currently, his research interests lie in the macroeconomics of the net zero transition, the structure and evolution of production networks, and the future of technology.

His research has appeared in economics and interdisciplinary journals, and has been featured in books, news articles, and public sector reports. See https://francoislafond.info for updated information, including working papers.

Nanditha is researcher at UNU-MERIT. Nanditha's research interests focus broadly on the microeconomics of innovation and development, in detail, on firm capabilities, firm performance and industrial policy. Nanditha is leading the team on "Conflicting and complementary policies for development"  within the new flagship programme of UNU-MERIT on Comprehensive Innovation for Sustainable Development (CI4SD). Before joining UNU-MERIT, she was a Postdoctoral fellow at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and at the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy (in Florence).

Ljubica Nedelkoska studies the impact of technology on the labor market, skills, migration and diasporas. She is interested in economic development, labor economics, and public policy. She is currently a research scientist at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, a visiting professor at the Central European University in Vienna, and a senior research fellow at the Growth Lab at Harvard University.

Dr Neave O'Clery is Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London where she leads an inter-disciplinary research group focused on data-driven models for economic development and developing cities. She is currently seconded part time to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Her work spans a number of topics and fields including economic complexity and evolutionary economic geography, the informal economy, urban mobility and network science. Neave was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and before this a Fulbright Scholar and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is founder and Chair of the Oxford Summer School in Economic Networks, an annual multi-disciplinary summer school since 2017. She holds a PhD (mathematics) from Imperial College.

Luciano Pietronero is the President of the Enrico Fermi Research Center, formerly Full Professor at the Physics Department of La Sapienza University of Rome and at the University of Groningen. Professor Pietronero has a broad international experience in academic and industrial institutions. Author of more than 400 scientific papers, he was the coordinator of a national PNR project “Crisis Lab” funded by the Italian Government and of several international research projects. Chairman of the international conference on Statistical Physics STATPHYS 23 held in 2007 in Genoa (Italy). Expert of statistical physics, many body theories, and one of the world's leading expert of complex systems and economic complexity. In 2008 he was the recipient of the Enrico Fermi Prize, the highest award of the Italian Physical Society. He  founded and directed (2010-2016) the CNR Institute of Complex Systems (ISC). From 2016, he is Senior Advisor for the World Bank Group. 

Angelica Sbardella is a researcher at the Enrico Fermi Research Centre in Rome and research associate at SOAS University of London School of Finance and Management. Her research focuses on industrial competitiveness and development, labour markets, technological innovation, economic inequality, and the sustainable transition; data-driven and policy-oriented in its nature, it aims at building a bridge between economic complexity and more traditional approaches in economics. She previously was a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa and research fellow at the Institute of Complex Systems-CNR; has been consultant at the European Commission, World Bank Group, ILO, and UNU-MERIT, using the economic complexity framework to address issues in regional development, skill creation and industrial innovation.

Bart Verspagen is professor of the macroeconomics of innovation and new technology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD from the same university, in 1992. After his PhD, he was awarded a scholarship by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He became professor of economics at the Eindhoven University of technology in 1998. From 2001 to 2011, he was visiting professor at the University of Oslo in Norway. In 2008, he returned to Maastricht University and became professor of international economics. From 2012 to 2020, he was director of the research institute UNU-MERIT in Maastricht. 

His research interests focus on the economics of innovation and new technology in a broad sense, with an emphasis on growth and development in a global context. He applies an evolutionary perspective on economics and is interested in heterodox economics including post-Keynesian perspectives. He is an Editor in Chief of the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, and holds an honorary doctorate of the University of Oslo. 

http://www.verspagen.nl/ 

https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=f7KIuDAAAAAJ&hl=nl&oi=ao 

Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers is a full professor at KULeuven (BE) at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation.  She is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a CEPR Research Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and of the Academia Europeana. She served on the ERC Scientific Council from 2012-2018. With her research concentrated in the fields of industrial organisation, international economics and strategy, innovation and science, she has authored numerous well cited publications in leading international journals. Specific recent topics include novelty in science and technology development, global innovation value chains, young innovative companies, innovation for climate change, industry science links and their impact on firm’s innovative productivity, evaluation of research & innovation policy.